Recently yahoo sports had an article Can Someone, anyone please take down the SEC? I think it’s a sentiment most of us that aren’t fans of SEC schools probably share. I know I wouldn’t mind someone else win the national title. It is getting a little tiresome. 7 Straight national football titles and Alabama looks primed to make it 8. That said it’s not the SEC that is going to back up anytime soon. The other 4 power conference need to quit the griping about the SEC and do something about it because each one is feeding into the SEC dominance.

Let’s start with the vote for the playoff format. Of course a 4 team playoff without conference team limit favors the SEC. It’s a a great deal for them. I would say at least half the time they will have 2 teams in the 4 teams playoffs for the foreseeable future. The other 4 power conferences failed to make much issue with this. They should have fought for a 8 team playoff with 5 conference champions and 3 wild card teams. At the very least with the the playoff details not yet complete, they better push for a heavily weighted conference champion scenario.

It’s inevitable at the moment 1 loss SEC teams are going push out just other 1 loss teams from any other conference.

Just ask 11-1 Kansas State from the Big 12 (widely considered the 2nd best conference) if they would have been in the 4 team playoff last season, and the answer is no as they finished 5th in the BCS standings. The 2 one loss SEC teams were ranked ahead of any other 1 loss team in the country. If that’s what the other conferences want then good luck with that. Perceptions of the SEC football dominance aren’t changing until you start winning games on the field against elite SEC competition. Beating Ole Miss and Kentucky don’t count.

In this regard It isn’t going to change either until other conferences take advantage of opportunities that are there every year. Fair or not SEC teams are given a benefit of the doubt when they lose, and highly rewarded when they win. Each other Power 5 conference has missed on chances to close the gap on the SEC.

The Big 10 despite their monetary riches have proven year after year with embarrassing bowl performances against the SEC, that money doesn’t buy championships or even decent football. 2-7 against the SEC the last 3 years with only 1 win over a ranked SEC team doesn’t get it done. Well I guess they can take credit for kickstarting South Carolina’s Jadevon Clowney 2013 Heisman campaign. Thanks Michigan! Go Blue! Opportunities missed…

The Pac 12 has had fewer head to head to matchups with the SEC, but when Oregon sat 2nd in the BCS standings in week 11 in 2012 before losing in their home stadium to Stanford. Of course they’d finish behind both 1 loss SEC teams. Opportunity missed…

The Big 12 has their own similar story.. Go back to 2011.. Oklahoma St. sitting 2nd in the BCS standings in week 11, got beat by an Iowa State team that went 6-7. Call it media bias that dropped Oklahoma St. behind any of the other 1 loss SEC, but if the Cowboys win that game against Iowa State they don’t leave things to chance. Texas A&M and Johnny Manziel can thank the Oklahoma Sooners for taking the Cotton Bowl off, giving the Aggies more off-season hype they ever had. The Sooners had a chance to compete with one of the SEC’s better teams and failed miserably. Opportunity missed…

No conference is tied more to the SEC than the ACC. With several in state rivalries and a shared history between many of the schools ACC football has long been in the shadow of SEC football. The ACC is arguably player for player the 2nd most talented conference in America. They had the 2nd highest number of NFL picks in this year’s NFL draft and the Florida State Seminoles had more players drafted into the NFL this year than other team in the country. More than half the ACC teams reside the talent rich southern part of the United States, yet they have been unable to field a truly elite team since the 2000 FSU squad. To their credit Clemson and Florida State are starting to show real signs of life but that’s still more than a decade of a ton of missed opportunities…

Only the ACC hasn’t played in the SEC in a BCS title game they last seven yeas. The Big 10, Pac 12, Big 12, and even Notre Dame all have, and they all lost. More opportunities missed..

So what exactly happens when you are team that doesn’t missed a said opportunity against the SEC? All you have to do is take a look at the offseason’s of Clemson and Louisville. The Tigers built more credibility into their program by knocking off a top 10 LSU team in the Chick Fil A bowl than with anything they had done in recent memory. The get their next “opportunity” against a top 10 Georgia team where a win would probably put Clemson in the top 5. Clemson starts this season ranked in the top 10 largely built off that LSU win.

Louisville used their 2012 Sugar Bowl opportunity to crush a top 5 Florida team. Now the Cardinals will also start the season the in top 10, and are considered by many a darkhorse national title contender. All made easier by beating a highly ranked SEC team.

Boise St. for all the great work they had done beating the Oregons, Virginia Techs and Oklahomas of the world didn’t truly get the respect they deserved until they went into the SEC’s backyard of Atlanta, Georgia and dominated a top 20 Georgia team. That opened up eyes across the nation.

Don’t think for a second Utah beating a top 5 Alabama team in the Sugar Bowl didn’t lay some of the groundwork for Utah getting a Pac 12 invite a couple of years later.

The resurgence of Florida State football, can in part be traced to beating the Florida Gators 2 of the last 3 years and beating a top 20 South Carolina team in the Chick Fil A bowl in 2010.

The rewards of actually beating the better teams in the SEC are pretty substantial.

It’s a simple matter really. The media bias does exists for the SEC, but the rest of the country gets plenty of chances to change that bias, and in most cases has failed with the results on the field. Each year the SEC has 3-4 really good football teams. If the rest of the country can’t break through those handful of top SEC teams from time to time, who’s fault is that the SEC? The Media’s? or the rest of the country namely the other 4 Power Conferences?